Little thought about hiring modders in the dev team

[Athlonic]

Nahhh

I am quite sure, Squad have decided to kill the modding community by hiring every single modder out there !

[leax256]

Personally, I would rather see the stock game incorporate the best mods by hiring them as developers. I think mods are great, but there is limited support and let's face it ... people lose interest and they stop working with some updates.

better to hire the modders than simply add the stuff yourself, kinda like minecraft. anyway, who knows the mods better than the modders them selfs.

[Cooly568]

I think that the mods added to the stock game actually get a lot of their parts removed.

Take the C7 pack for example, it lost at least 1/4 of its parts.

[EndOfTheEarth]

My biggest worry - and this is from first and second-hand experience, some of it very recent and a very similar situation - is that people tend to stop being passionate about what they're doing when it's a job and there's tight deadlines and business-driven compromises being forced on them.

From what I've seen of Squad's development patterns, they use Agile methodology instead of Waterfall. This means that the deadlines aren't as tight, and, as a work in development, the compromises are based on where they are in terms of functionality, rather than pure profit.

Honestly. Agile. Look it up.

[TheDarkStar]

I think that the mods added to the stock game actually get a lot of their parts removed.

Take the C7 pack for example, it lost at least 1/4 of its parts.

However, the C7 pack had a lot of very similar parts. Also, better aerodynamics (but still not realistic, yet) were added along with lift surfaces.

[SunJumper]

But you'll see more and better work out of these talented people by paying them.

Eg: C7 aerospace, Nova's new textures for 0.18

Are you sure? (#1)

[shadowsutekh]

Just want to point on that on page 83 of bac9's mod release thread, he said that though he is swamped by work, he has no present plans to abandon the mod and two more people are involved now. Additionally he said that he wasn't ordered by squad to kill it, so he'll work on it as he has time or feels like it.

[Jason Patterson]

<admission>I did not carefully read all six pages of this thread, apologies if I'm repeating something better stated elsewhere.</admission>

First and foremost I'm happy for those who have been added to the dev staff. While being recognized by your fans for your work is fantastic, being paid is also pretty darned nice, and if any of these people are involved in the design/gaming industry, this will be a nice note for their CV's.

It's also important to remember that mods stop being developed all the time. Modders are just like the rest of us; we play a game for a period of time and then move on. Rather than the authors of your favorite mods going away from the game entirely and leaving their mods to die, they've now become part of its official development and will be able to influence the direction in which the entire game moves. In the short term it may mean that some mods are lost, but in the long term, it should produce a better game.

[Fel]

I would like to make some points about "Mod Diversity"

First, mod diversity DECREASES as compilation mods INCREASE.

You may be scared that the devs are stealing away modders, but what about MechJeb? Understand HOW Microsoft/Apple/Google grew to where they are... they all spent time adding in "half-assed features" to takeover the niche market. What finally caused IE to fail was NOT firefox, it was a MASSIVE social-media campaign that spread "Get Firefox" urls everywhere until they gained enough market-share for developers to start making "Firefox Only Webpages."

Someone asked for a "Maneuver Node Mod" and while one person mentioned an existing mod, people tried to drown out the external mod with the "MechJeb is better, kill all other development" rants.

If you want to increase mod diversity, you should NEVER support compilation mods, it only increases the barrier of entry.

In general, the "best programmed mods" are often created by the people with "no talent."

As a "re-modder", I tend to change existing mods into what I had envisioned... and can often go down into reprogramming the entire mod... but there is a difference between me and a modder.

Now I work very well with extending systems that have limited functionality because I grow to understand exactly what the smallest part of said system is capable of. With FAR more restrictive languages, I can REALLY shine as I'll have the API stored completely in my mind and hence manipulate it until I see a solution.

But I am not really a modder. Despite having shown many people some very neat tricks in other games; there is a level of, creativity. That human interaction... the risk taking. The use of a different kind of analysis to create extraordinary creations. While I can very quickly come up with ways to create what they mention, and have witnessed a few mods being born... the people who do the best job are exceptional at their own design.

There is a Lack of Interest in Diversity

People ARE scared of change... and those highly creative types who would provide you the mods you want are likely just as scared to reveal their work. Sometimes they feel they have something much better; but with people shooting down mod ideas for the current existence of similar mods, how can you ever expect there to be diversity?

The more you build up the existing mods, the harder it is to compete against or even surpass them. If tomorrow "RoboJeb" was released that removed every bug of MechJeb and had superior calculations to preserve fuel down to the mL; there would still be complaints about how it should be incorporated into MechJeb rather than exist as a separate mod.

The point is... you have to stop supporting the current cartel and allow a new regime to step in. You don't tell the new modders how shoddy their mod is, or how much better X mod is... you help them. Perhaps I'm speaking far too generally here, but I've seen so many people insulted by "Old Time Modders" over ideas that the modder latter actually succeeded in doing.